Hacker

There have been several guys passing through IFF recently who are active duty, yet are attending FTU at Springfield ANGB. At the moment Luke is jam-packed full of students. So full, actually, that previously experienced Viper drivers looking to get back through a TX course are having trouble finding a spot.

There's an annual application process. Just like applying for a UPT slot with an AF 215, there is a special duty application you have to send the the USAFADS. In addition to getting top ranking from your Wing Commander, you'll also need some glorious recommendation letters from powerful people to go with that application. This year the Thunderbirds chose 12 semi-finalists to go out to Nellis and interview for a week. Out of those 12, they've currently whittled it down to 6 finalists to fill three positions this year. The finalists will go to Nellis for more interviews and to fly with the team in the 2-seater.

More like the AF and the AFRES didn't want him. He wasn't exactly what you'd call a gifted fighter pilot. You should hear the stories from some of the people who flew with him. 800 hours and still a wingman...sheesh.

I thought it was for "First and Finest"

Since the topic of discussion here is "Approaches at UPT", I want to mention that the T-38C, while GPS equipped, does NOT fly GPS approaches. I'm not sure of what the T-6 has to offer, though. Also realize that while apparently the C-17 has the ability to fly GPS approaches, none of the fighter aircraft that I know of have this capability. So, it's TACANs, VORs, ILSs, and GCI approaches for all my friends! On the subject of GPS navigation two points: One, from the "embracing technology" side of things, I don't see how navigating from place to place using GPS fixes is all that different from using radio NAVAIDs -- you still have to use similar procedures to proceed direct there (rather than homing). Two, from the "old crusty guy" side of the house, I also agree that pilots need to equally understand how to navigate using radio NAVAIDs or INS systems instead of GPS. I can tell you from personal experience that the GPS signal in central Iraq during OIF was *trashed*, probably due to the GPS jammers that were deployed there. Did it effect operations? Not from where I was sitting, because we just flipped our nav systems over to INS and continued with what we were doing. Plus, there's that really handy "map reading" thing that worked out amazingly well. In addition, all that stuff about how many satellites are guaranteed to be up at any time is nice...but...what about during wartime when we go against an enemy who can target our satellites? I can think of one potential adversary who has this capability and the intent to take down GPS satellites if the time comes. Bottom line with that is we must not become completely reliant on GPS for navigation and targeting because it may not always be there for us. Again, this part of the conversation is WAY off the topic of approaches at UPT but still a factor since that seems to be the way the discussion is going.

For what it's worth, "on to hold" is what fighter guys respond with when given "taxi into position and hold". This is not slang -- this is actual procedural comm that is mandated by USAF operating procedure.

jtpuro - I do the same for ATIS, initial IFR clearances, and taxi instructions. Over time, I've developed shorthand so I can write it down and not be too delayed in reading it back. Since sometimes I'm getting in-flight clarances for splitting off a wingman from a formation, I write those down, too, so I can repeat it to him if he didn't hear it the first time.

Yeah, I do agree that some IFF IPs take comm brevity to the extreme and I agree it sounds kinda stupid sometimes. When I first heard the "Base, Gear, Stop" call in the final turn, I kept thinking, "shouldn't they be saying "*left* base, gear *down*, *full* stop"? Remember that our student training mission is to slap the white-jet right outta our students, who are sometimes taught some un-fighter like habit patterns by the SUPT training environment. So, consequently some stuff (radio comm is one of them) is a little over the top. I call IFF the "Admin Weapons School" because all that little administrative stuff is what we're *really* teaching, even though the students think we're teaching them dogfighting and bomb-dropping.

Well, call me crazy, but in my opinion the definition of being an aviation professional means that you do things the way you're supposed to. When this comes to radio communication, it means you say what the FAA pilot/controller phraseology book says you do. The flying community has developed standard terminology so that we can say the precise thing we want to while simultaneously being concise and using as little air time as possible. Military radio communication, especially, uses brevity terminology to the max extent possible. Some of this you will be taught at UPT, and some of it you will just pick up as you mature as a military pilot. In the fighter community comm is a *very* high interest item and requires a lot of discipline on the part of the user. When we fight, subtle word differences (like "tally" vs "visual") mean drastically different things, so being correct and concise is very important. I look at controller communication much the same way. If you think that the radios are busy in a big Class B terminal area, you should hear what Strike Prime sounds like out at Red Flag, or even better, what the AWACS freqs sounded like over Iraq during OIF. No matter what military airframe you go to, someday you'll have to operate in one of these frenetic radio environments, and you'll be thankful for your fellow pilots having a tight comm act, just as they will be thankful if you do. Now, I do understand being brief with clearance readbacks. Do I really need to repeat word-for-word "Eagle 31, turn left 330, maintain 1,800 until established on the localizer, cleared ILS runway 26" when "Eagle 31, left 330, 1800 'till established, cleared the approach" will do? Of course this kind of brevity is okay. Freestyling it, though, is not needed, nor does it make anyone else -- including the controllers and your fellow pilots on freq -- think you're a pro. I have heard more than one airline captain trying to get cutesy with their radio calls, and I certainly don't think they sound cool. They may be "flying the line" and making a lot more than I am, but a loose act on the radio is nothing that is admirable from my standpoint. Just as others have said, my feeling is that the "professional" way is how you'll be taught as an Air Force aviator, and how you'll be expected to operate once you're out in the real world.

So, not sounding like a professional makes you feel more professional? I don't think that using nonstandard comm makes you sound cool...it makes you sound like a clown.

Which squadron? Prancers?

These are instantaneous Gs, though. A Viper in a 180-degree 9G sustained turn puts it's pilot through significantly more stress than Sean Tucker spiking 12 in a snap roll. The human body can sustain lots of instantaneous G in the Z-axis (just look at ejections, people falling off buildings and living, etc) -- but the physiological concern is can the pilot *sustain* that kind of G and still function.

Generally it's ham-fisted pilots.

My sqaudron was hard crewed during the first 2 weeks of OIF.

Puuuure urban legend. I heard the same thing back when I was a nuke weapons maintenance officer -- that the neutron and gamma radiation did weird things to men and as a result most had female kids. Then I heard it again when I got to the F-15 -- that the side and back lobes off the radar (or maybe it was the frequent G forces) would do the same thing. Well, I did both, and I had a boy. A friend of mine who also did nukes and subsequently flew the E-3 for a living also had a boy. About 3 years ago a ERAU graduate student did a survey at Seymour Johnson trying to get hard (sts) numeric statistics to support the "more girl than boy children" claim. Out of several hundred fighter pilots surveyed there was *no conclusive* data either way. So, in my book, until someone comes up with some actual proof other than "heard it through the grapevine", it's gonna remain a wives tale. [ 03 March 2004, 20:05: Message edited by: Hacker ]

Yeah, like I'm going to ARM SAFE and turn my radar off 15 minutes prior to rendezvousing with the tanker!

Not sure what kind of Ops squadrons you've been in, but that is nowhere near the experience I've had in the fighter community.

In a fighter squadron your callsign *is* your name. When someone calls the Ops Desk and says "can I speak to Bob", everyone asks themselves, "who the f*ck is Bob?!". I generally use the 2-ranks rule for callsign use. If a guy is 2-ranks above me, I'll use "sir" at least a couple times during the conversation. The Ops Officer and the Squadron Commander are always "sir" in my book. Other than that, everyone is callsigns (and *definitely* all CGOs address each other that way). Sometimes the Mayor will designate a friday as "first-name friday." This is when everyone must address each other by first names only. The problem is that everyone is wearing their callsign nametags. There's also a no "dude" or "sir" rule, otherwise you get fined for each offense. Just more stupid pilot tricks.

Do you know Brett Raftery there with the Robins J-STARS unit?

The class was probably fine...I'm betting it was the USEM that sucked.

Mother F*cker please! What are the details on this one? Jeez, just hook the guy and get it done with...or did the entire class suck (sts)?

In the Strike Eagle (which carries more gas on our internal tanks than the Viper does with externals...) our rule of thumb was to land with no more gas in thousands of pounds than you had thousands of feet of runway to land on. Since your average fighter base runway is around 8,000 feet, 8K was generally about the most we wanted to actually land with unless you wanted to worry about burning the brakes. I'm guessing that the Viper has ROTs that are similar, so hopefully somebody here can fill us in (sts).

It's a method to quickly burn down gas to an approriate landing weight.

The 15E definitely does not have a certified HUD.